“Jesus was an incarnation, absolutely purest form of incarnation.” (Shri Mataji, 1st Dec. 1980, Caxton Hall). He was born around the year 0 in Bethlehem. What we know about His life – besides what Shri Mataji told us – is from the Gospels (New Testament), brought to us from the Apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. And from some other Gospels, many discovered later, which are not part of the big churches’ canon. We know very little from His life between His birth and when He started preaching, at the age of about thirty.

The whole of the Jewish Palestine (Judaea and Galilee) belonged to the Roman empire at Christ’s birth. King Herod, the ruler, was an ally of the Romans. Most people in the area were farmers, many had herds of sheep. People could do without extreme poverty or famines. Most had enough to pay their taxes and to offer sacrifices at the temple at the annual festivities. They spoke mainly Aramaic, the language in which also Lord Jesus spoke and preached. This Semitic language is still spoken in parts of Syria and by the Myzrahim (Myzrahi Jews, particular in Kurdistan and Iraq).

The Jews differed from other people in the ancient world because they believed that there was only one God, thanks to Shri Abraham and Shri Moses. The Jews also believed that they had been specially chosen by the one God to serve Him and obey His laws. The most important part of Jewish Scripture was and is the Torah, or Pentateuch, comprising five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; “books of the law”), which are said to be from Shri Moses. There are more old prophetical books which are important to the Jewish religion, they form the “Tanakh.” The Torah and most books of the Tanakh are identical with the Christians’ Old Testament. Lord Jesus referred to these old scriptures. For this reason and, because it was the only existing old wisdom in this part of the world, it was adopted (with some variations) by the Christian religions.